Verena Hefti | Leaders Plus

Verena set up Leaders Plus, an innovative Social Enterprise, to address the issue that too many talented parents feel forced to drop off the leadership pipeline after having had children.

After giving birth to baby Naira, Verena decided to help more new parents stay on the leadership trajectory and started to work on Leaders Plus. She is currently pregnant with her second child.

When on her first maternity leave, Verena and many of her peers felt torn between wanting to be a loving parent and being ambitious in their careers.

Verena was passionate about showing how you can do both.

With her work, Verena challenges the paradigm that you have to choose between continuing a leadership career and be a loving parent to young children.

Previously, Verena has run highly successful leadership development programmes and events for 10 years in Switzerland, Denmark and the UK, most recently as South East at Teach First where she worked to redesign leadership development conferences and delivered leadership training to 400 Teach First participants.

She graduated with an MA with distinction in Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester where she studied gender equality in depth.